Monday, March 05, 2012

(originally published in the November, 2011 issue of Cinematic Completist)

Any person with even a modest interest in cinema can, at the
slightest provocation, cite the names of a dozen or more celluloid artistes
who, without question, have staked indelible claims on the projection booths of
the mass imagination – names like Welles (Citizen
Kane), Hitchcock (Rear Window),
Spielberg (1941), and Raffill (Mannequin 2: On the Move). All possessed undeniable talent, perhaps even
genius, but there is more to their immortality than that. Lasting success in such a cutthroat medium
must also be attributed to their tenacity, indomitability, and occasional
willingness to fellate their superiors when necessary (hence the term “studio
head”). But what of the others, that
pale and tragic remnant untouched by fickle Kismet’s hand and unable to suppress
the gag reflex so stalwartly? Surely
their contribution, however paltry, to the annals of film history deserves some
recognition? Frankly, no, it doesn’t. They’re total and abject failures and deserve
only to be treated as such. But a
freelance assignment is a freelance assignment.

S.W. Poltroon (1872-1926),
director

Between Edison and Griffith came the man who may well have been cinema’s very
first auteur. A former photographer and painter of still
lifes, Poltroon seized upon the newborn medium with great fervor while taking a
somewhat narrow view of its potential.
His known features – Man Standing
Still (1903), Rigor Mortis (1904),
The Unadorned Wall (1904), and his
magnum opus, Two Men Standing Still (1906),
were met with decidedly less enthusiasm than expected, though his famed “baby
carriage sitting in one place” shot from his 1905 short subject The Idle Pram came to be much imitated,
though not by other filmmakers.

Arvid de Marqeux (1885-??),
director/choreographer

A one-time pratfall consultant for Hal Roach Studios, de Marqeux spent all
his spare hours and most of his savings pursuing his lifelong obsession – to
transfer the thrills and entertainment of the stage shows he’d seen on the
Moulin Rouge, Broadway, and Fondulac, Wisconsin (where once somebody danced on
a mail crate in the middle of town whistling to himself) to the young medium of
film. After years of cajoling, Roach
acquiesced to de Marqeux’s wishes, and, with all present and future salaries
put up as collateral, de Marqeux wrote, produced, directed and choreographed Millie’s Terrible Illness! (1915), the
world’s first musical. Sadly, the
limitations of the production (mainly that it was produced before the advent of
sound in film and de Marqeux failed to secure the rights to any recordings of
the show’s music) doomed it to failure after a disastrous opening night at the
Pant-au-Lune Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, during which the in-house
organist was stoned to death. Following
the success (and technological advances) of The
Jazz Singer in 1927, de Marqeux developed a remake, which scarcely got past
the script stage in spite of promises of
unprecedented budgets by his main investor, Charles Ponzi. De Marqeux disappeared shortly thereafter.

Cedric Bauer, Jr. (1926-1961), director/animator

Known by aficionados as “The Father-in-Law, or Great Uncle, or Some Distant Blood Relation of Digital Cinema,” Bauer, Jr. was surely instrumental to the introduction of computer-generated imagery into the marriage-aged medium of film. Disheartened by his experiences working as an animator for Zyzniak Pictures, who mounted a marginally-successful challenge to Disney with their features Beppo, the Finger-Sniffing Ape (1951) and Princess with a Limp (1952), and visibly excited by then-current innovations like 3-D. CinemaScope, and turning the lights out in the theater before the movie starts, Bauer, Jr. awoke one night with what he described in his journals as “a fully-formed vision – movies made without actors or artists, but by the new breed of supercomputer, programmed by men with malleable foreheads.” After some professional consultation, he modified his approach slightly, and, with the enthusiastic cooperation of IBM and the siphoning of several hundred thousand dollars from the government’s nascent space program, Bauer, Jr. embarked on this unprecedentedly ambitious project. Though only 26 seconds in length, requiring several warehouses’ worth of punch cards, and consisting solely of what one critic described as “a cloud or a floating blob or something,” Computer Movie (1954) was an immediate sensation, breaking box-office records nationwide and touching off a national craze that was slotted in at the last minute between goldfish-swallowing and McCarthyism. Sadly, Bauer, Jr. was unable to capitalize on his sudden success, due to legal troubles stemming from his contract with distributor Bob’s Films which stated that all profits be paid to him in Capri pants. His projected sequel, Computer Movie Part II: A Larger, Redder Blob, exists only in treatment form.

Barry Trilbo
(1935-1978), producer

After several failed entrepreneurial enterprises (like the short-lived
Lease-a-Pizza chain), Trilbo drifted into film production in the early 1960s
with a single, inspired idea to cut down on development costs – attain the
rights to television programs, existing properties with high name recognition
that few imagined would have much staying power outside of the small screen,
and adapt them for the slightly-balding but still distinguished-looking medium of film. The first project for Trilbo’s production
company, the Trilbo Production Company, was to take one of the most beloved
programs of the early days of TV and enlarge it accordingly. Unfortunately, due to poor communication
among Trilbo’s acquisition team and a sense of business acumen that might best
be described as “meager” (though “tragic,” “farcical,” and “resembling that of
a gnat with severe cortical damage” wouldn’t be totally inaccurate), he wound
up paying $3.6 million for Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Life is Worth Living. The
program, though indeed beloved, consisted solely of gentle theological insights
using only a blackboard to illustrate them.
Undaunted by the rather static nature of the source material and the
fact that Sheen refused to participate (to cover up the fact, the "Bishop" would be seen
only in long shot with a Mexican wrestler’s mask stuck to his head), Trilbo
refused to cut his losses and forged ahead with production. Alas, in spite of his yeoman efforts to “jazz
it up” for the big screen (state-of-the-art [for 1962] pyrotechnics, a
climactic hydrofoil chase, colored chalk), Life
is Worth Living… or Else!! proved an unqualified disaster and was pulled
from distribution three minutes into the second reel. Trilbo’s finances and reputation, such as
they were, never recovered, though he was reportedly in negotiations to produce
an epic miniseries based on “this really great antacid commercial I saw” before
he was eaten by pigs at age 52.

Bix Caracas (1932-1984),
writer/director/actor

Presaging the work of brilliant comic conceptualists like Andy Kaufman,
Albert Brooks, and Carrot Top, Caracas, after selling out nightclubs and
integrity nationwide with a radical stand-up act focused around him remaining
seated, followed the lead of fellow carbon-based humorists Mel Brooks and Woody
Allen and wrote, directed and starred in a series of groundbreaking comedies
unlike anything previously seen in the nearly-retirement-aged and slightly
forgetful medium of film. Starting with The Great Bank Deposit (1972), starring
Caracas as a hapless schlub who forgets to sign the back of his paycheck, and
running all the way through his final, mature masterpiece, Helen Barkewicz (1972), the bittersweet story of a doomed romance
from first date to end-of-first-date, Caracas’ comedies were unprecedented in
that, as New York Times-reading
critic Stanley Prolix explained, “they weren’t funny. I mean, I don’t think they were even intended to be funny, that’s how unfunny
they were.” In the years following,
Caracas’ films, which have yet to be released on DVD, videocassette or
celluloid, have nonetheless garnered a cult following, based mainly in a
hastily-built armed compound in Ogden, Utah.
“Caracas’ brilliant pictures are a testament to the filmic transcendence
attainable by those rare comic minds brave and brilliant enough to steer
audiences gently but firmly away from laughter, mirth, or levity of any
kind. He remains an inspiration to all
of us,” said Caracas scholar Percy “the Anointed” Banlonne, shortly before
being felled in a hail of Federal bullets.

Part Two, to be
published shortly before my gas service is interrupted, will cover other
neglected cinematic pioneers, such as Horace Darjeeling, self-styled “King of
the Nudie Costume Drama”; Velma
Goat-Tungsten, for many years one of the most amusing names in docudrama; and
Bertram L. Kestler, whose valiant effort to “bring back the filmstrip” ended in
tragicomedy.